In diplomacy, nothing can be taken for granted

KANG TAE-HWA
The author is a Washington correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo.

In Roanoke, a city in southern Virginia, a sign in Korean caught my eye. It says “Wonju Street.” The city of Roanoke has been a sister city of Wonju, Gangwon, since 1964. In 1982, a 500-meter section of Route 220 was named Wonju Street. In front of Wonju City Hall is the Roanoke Intersection.

The United States is Korea’s only ally. Koreans often add the word “ironclad” when describing the Korea-U.S. alliance, and they just take the alliance for granted, just like the Roanoke Intersection that Wonju citizens pass every day.

John Bolton, who served as national security adviser during Trump’s first term, said the obvious. In an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo, he said that the goal of Korean Peninsula policy should be reunification of the divided land. Regarding the situation of division where two governments exist, Bolton stressed that it was just temporary.

What he said is stipulated in Article 4 of our Constitution, which says, “The Republic of Korea shall seek unification and shall formulate and carry out a policy of peaceful unification based on the basic free and democratic order.” But Article 4 no longer seems natural due to different administrations’ disparate positions on North Korea, which is the other half of the concept of unification.

Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times, but to no avail. Nevertheless, people who know Trump say that negotiations with Kim will resume if he returns to the White House. But under Trump’s new plan, chances are high that South Korea, which once claimed to be the “driver,” will lose its role.

Richard Rollis, an assistant secretary of the Department of Defense in charge of the East Asia and the Pacific regions, told me that South Korea would be sitting in the “side saddle as an observer.” He added that Seoul will certainly have a say, but it will be difficult to exercise a veto.

“Then should we go to war?” I asked Bolton, who had argued for a preemptive strike against North Korea. He declined to give an immediate answer. Instead, he said that the North Korean regime should have been pressured without evoking hostility against North Koreans.

In 2012, Wonju shut down Roanoke Plaza, a symbol of the sisterly ties, after a resident survey. There were concerns that the removal was rude to the sister city, but many residents responded that they didn’t know about the plaza’s existence.

At some point, they seemed to take everything for granted, just like air. But you cannot do that in diplomacy, as seen in the complete change in the security environment surrounding the Korean Peninsula even without our knowledge.